Govt comes out with FIH World Cup accounts

Details of Rs 59cr expenditure out of allotted Rs 82.5cr revealed

Bhubaneswar: After a huge hue and cry, the state government came up with a provisional statement of expenditure of Odisha Men’s Hockey World Cup 2018.

As per the statement, the government spent Rs 59.59 crore for the event while the total budgetary allocation for the international event was Rs 82.5 crore.Rs 25 crore was provided to the host/presenting partner rights and fess to International Hockey Federation (FIH) and Hockey India (Hl) while Rs 9.23 crore has been spent for media and publicity.

The provision statement says that government has utilised Rs 6.94 crore for management of the event, Rs 6.54 crore for the venue (Kalinga Stadium) and Rs 3.73 crore for transportation of the players and their officials.

Similarly, for branding of the mega event in India and outside the country, the state has utilised Rs 1.5 crore while Rs 1.11 crore given for accommodation of players and other guests visited the state during the event.

The expenditure related to management of event is Rs 2.18 crore and Rs 84.96 lakhs has been utilised as statutory expenses, the statement given by the Sports and Youth Services department said.

Interestingly, Rs 2.50 crore has been earmarked as miscellaneous expenditure and the government has not completed settlement of accounts even after seven months.

“Keeping in view the enormity and scale of execution of different works for organization of Hockey World Cup 2018, the settlement of accounts are underway,” it said.

The government also stated that Hockey World Cup related other activities including opening ceremony have been organized by Hockey India through their own resources.

The international sporting event was organised here at Kalinga Stadium, November 28-December 16, last year.

Earlier, government had shown reluctant to share the financial transactions for organising the hockey extravaganza. The government neither provided the financial transaction data in the Assembly nor replied to RTI application. Opposition parties and RTI activists had alleged financial irregularities in hoisting the event.